Oracle Endeca extensions release touches supply chain functions

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Oracle on Monday unveiled extensions for its Endeca platform aimed at allowing businesses to explore their operational data in real-time, so they can focus on transactions that require their immediate attention.
Oracle acquired Endeca, a provider of unstructured data management, Web commerce and business intelligence solutions in December 2011.
The extensions include several areas that touch Oracle’s supply chain-based applications, including order management, warehouse management, and landed cost management.
Oracle Endeca Information Discovery is essentially layered on top of the Oracle E-Business Suite, allowing users to “find information that they might not find using a conventional ERP query interface, and from there take immediate action on current opportunities or issues,” Oracle said. “Current operational data is loaded into a faceted, in-memory data model that dynamically supports changing information. Information is pre-classified, pre-summarized, and pre-filtered to enable search, discovery, and analysis via a rich, configurable interface.”American Shipper reported on in-memory computing in its July issue.
In terms of landed cost management, Oracle said the Endeca extensions will allow users to improve global procurement decisions based on landed costs. Order management can be aided by identifying and expediting high-priority, high-value orders, enabling organizations to rapidly react to product quality or shipping issues by identifying problems that are causing returns.
"The purpose of Endeca is (to allow) unstructured analysis by business folks rather than special analysts," said Steve Banker, service director for supply chain management at ARC Advisory Group. "So it could be used for anything that can be imagined by a smart ops person that has access to data." - Eric Johnson